There was sudden burst of “OH WOW” in my heart when in this morning’s press conference Steve Maran announced that he had word that LIGO had discovered a gravitational wave from the crab nebulae. I honestly have always worried if LIGO, with its ground-based nature, could overcome the instabilities of a planet covered in people, and experiencing platechtonics. To work, it has to measure slight changes in the distance a laser beam travels that are only a few hairs in size over many kilometers (the beam bounces down and reflects back 2km or 4km arms). This is H-A-R-D! So when Steve made the announcement I WOOTed. But… If you read one of the many press releases, you’ll see that in reality, LIGO simply failed to detect a gravitational...